Your Thursday Briefing

Good morning. We’re covering NATO’s intensifying defense, the Taliban’s abrupt reversal on girls’ education and Julian Assange’s prison marriage.

NATO increases its defenses amid talks

NATO announced Wednesday that it would increase its military presence on its eastern frontier. The four additional combat-ready battalion-sized units were deployed in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, respectively.

Biden arrived in Brussels today for an extraordinary strategy session. Here, he will push European allies for more aggressive sanctions against Russia. Here’s the latest.

However, Europeans feel the effects of sanctions and war more acutely that Americans. NATO members are trying protect Ukraine without engaging directly with Russia.

European leaders may not be willing to stop the U.S. from buying Russian oil or gas. On average, the E.U. gets 40 percent of its natural gasoline and 25% of its oil directly from Russia. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, which has the largest economy in Europe, said halting such purchases would imperil “hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

Escalation: The U.S. is quietly making contingency plans in case President Vladimir Putin unleashes Russia’s stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Even without using extreme weapons, Russia has almost destroyed every day civilian life in Ukraine.

Dissent: Anatoly Chubais, Russia’s climate envoy, became the most senior government official to step down, reportedly to protest the war.

The war in the making

• According to Western intelligence reports, Russian forces are still in limbo. A senior NATO official said around 15,000 Russian soldiers might have died, more than double the Pentagon’s figure of around 7,000.

Other updates:

• The U.S. government officially concluded Wednesday that Russian forces committed war crimes against Ukraine.

• Renault, the French car company, has ceased operations in Russia.

• Russia’s reaction to requests from Ukraine and Estonia for Pegasus, a powerful spyware program, was Israel’s concern.

• Russia’s invasion has shown Germany — which swiftly began its biggest rearmament program since the end of the Cold War — to be a weak link in NATO.

Taliban reneges on girls’ schools

In an abrupt reversal, the Taliban said girls’ high schools in Afghanistan would remain closed until officials could assure their accordance with Islamic law, saying that female teachers and a religious uniform were needed. Girls’ schools were supposed to open this week.

Wednesday’s reversal is a significant blow to the Taliban’s international credibility: The move came a little more than a week before the U.N. had hoped donor countries would commit to more humanitarian aid to Afghanistan.

It could also threaten that funding. The international community has made girls’ education a central condition of foreign funding and any future recognition of the Taliban.

Context: Afghanistan is currently facing an economic crisis that has left more than half its population without enough food.

Details: Over one million girls had hoped to return to school on Wednesday. Some did return to class, but were forced to leave. “They came to my office, crying,” a principal in Kabul said.

Julian Assange marries in prison

Stella Moris was the WikiLeaks founder and he married Stella Moris at the London prison where they have been held since 2019. Supporters of the couple were encouraged to attend a “solidarity vigil” outside the facility, Belmarsh Prison.

It was unclear at this point who was present, and if the couple were allowed to hold a party or spend time alone.

Background: Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States for espionage allegations. After years of court battles, Britain’s Supreme Court refused his latest appeal to prevent his extradition.

Details: Moris wrote in an essay published in The Guardian on Wednesday that every aspect was being closely policened. WikiLeaks posted footage on TwitterAfter the ceremony, Moris was present.

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